


When The Sun Goes Down

by flawedamythyst



Series: Winglets AUs [4]
Category: Cabin Pressure, Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8125237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: Martin had never intended Tony to find out exactly what he turned into once a month, but sometimes fate pushes your hand.
Were!AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1electricpirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1electricpirate/gifts).



Carolyn had been surprisingly accommodating about it, once Martin had plucked up the courage to explain that he wouldn't be able to take any flights on the night of the full moon. That might have had something to do with the fact that he'd just agreed to work a full-time job for free but even after he'd been at MJN Air for a while, she never complained about having to schedule around it.

And she never mentioned it in front of Douglas or Arthur, for which Martin was infinitely grateful. Not that he'd mind Arthur knowing so much, but he would probably ask a million questions and then declare the whole thing 'Brilliant!', which Martin didn't think he could stomach.

Douglas was a whole other matter, of course. It didn't take Martin more than a couple of weeks at MJN to realise that he was the very last person you wanted to trust with an awkward and potentially embarrassing secret.

And then Martin met Tony. Tony, who took everything about Martin in stride without apparently rethinking his decision to be involved with him even once. Martin found himself on the verge of blurting it out more several times, but somehow never quite found the courage. It was easier just to keep quiet and hope he didn't notice anything odd.

Of course, that only worked up until Martin moved to New York. It was a lot easier to hide the fact that you spent one night every month hiding away from other people when you weren't living with your boyfriend and his super-powered friends.

It took him until the third day of living there to pluck up the courage to broach the subject. He waited until he and Tony were settled in bed, curled up around each other after a particularly energetic celebration of Martin's first day of work.

"Tony," he said, quietly, then stopped, unable to find the words for the rest.

"Yeah?" asked Tony, one hand tracing over Martin's back where there most be a particularly interesting group of freckles because Tony's hand often found its way there. And occasionally his lips did as well.

Martin opened his mouth and then shut it again. Tony twitched an eyebrow. "Have you got some big confession? Oh man, please don't let it be that you're not a real ginger, I'm not sure I could cope."

Martin snorted. "I think you've seen more than enough proof on that front," he said. "No, it's-" He found himself stopping again.

Tony pulled himself up onto his elbow, starting to frown. "Hey, hey, Spitfire. What is it?"

Martin took a very deep breath. "It's just- Um. Next Wednesday, I'm going to be out."

"Out?" asked Tony. "Okay, not sure why that's a terrifying thing to tell me. Where are you going? Is it with your new work guys?"

"No," said Martin, very slowly. "It's. Um. I'll be on my own, and uh, out the whole night. Until the sun comes up."

There was a pause, during which Tony put the dots together. "Oh," he said, and his face lit up. "Really? Serious? My Spitfire's a were? A were what? Oh man, please tell me it's something awesome, something- oh, wow, something ginger, yes? A fox or a-"

"I don't want to talk about it," said Martin, through gritted teeth. "Tony, please. Can you just leave it, and not, not ask anything? Please?"

Tony went very quiet and gave him a long look that made Martin want to hide under the bed. "Okay," he said, and Martin let himself relax. "Hey, that's okay, Spitfire." Tony pressed a kiss to Martin's forehead. "Just, you know. Whatever it is, I'm never going to think any less of you, okay?"

Martin managed a smile. "Okay," he said, then set about distracting Tony so thoroughly that he'd forget the whole conversation had happened.

It worked pretty well. On Wednesday, he came home from work just long enough to change into something old and comfortable, then gave Tony a nod and left again.

It took him a couple of months to find the right place to go and transform, but once he had a quiet place where he wasn't going to be disturbed, he felt like he was going to be able to make this work. It definitely helped that, after that first conversation, Tony never mentioned it again. He just made sure that they never had any plans on a full moon night and was always around when Martin left, although he never did more than give him a kiss goodbye.

They got engaged, which was simultaneously the most terrifying and most incredible thing to ever happen to Martin, and it looked like he was going to get to have everything he wanted without having to give up his secret.

Except, it seemed wrong to be prepared to marry Tony without opening up and letting him in to every part of Martin's life. How on earth was he meant to explain it, though? How was he meant to make Tony see that it wasn't something awesome and exciting?

And then the choice was taken out of his hands.

“Okay, I've gone over the engine,” said Tony, ducking under one of the wide-leafed bushes that the quinjet was now surrounded by. “Not good news. This baby is officially junk. I'm going to have to speed up production on the _Martin Quinjet MK 5_ when we get back.”

Steve let out a sigh and rubbed at his eyes. “Right, okay. Great.”

“Anyone else really wishing we'd waited for Thor to come back from Asgard?” said Clint, offering Tony a bottle of water from the emergency supplies.

“Or that my suit hadn't been so completely trashed by Kang?” put in Tony. “Man, I thought we were just going to go home and catch a nap, why does this bullshit always happen to us?”

“I'm so sorry,” said Martin, miserably. “I should have been able to land her better, then maybe you could fix her.”

“Don't be an idiot,” said Tony, slinging an arm around his shoulder and giving him a sideways hug. “This is firmly the pterodactyl's fault and, wow, there's a sentence I never thought I'd say.”

“I'm just grateful you got us down without anyone getting hurt,” said Clint. He raised his own bottle of water as if in a toast. “Thanks, appreciated.”

“We need some way to get home,” said Natasha. “Or at least find some way to get a signal to someone who can come and get us. I can't get anyone on the comms.”

“I can't get JARVIS,” said Tony. “Which should be impossible, unless something around here is somehow blocking satellite signals.”

Steve glanced out over the tangled jungle around them to the sun, which was hovering close to the horizon. “The first thing is to get through the night,” he said. “After that, we can see about getting home.”

“Well, the good news is that most of the cabin is intact, so we can sleep in there,” said Clint. “I can take first watch.”

It was an uncomfortable night's sleep in the wreck of the quinjet, even with the sleeping bags that had been in the emergency supplies and Tony curled up with one arm draped protectively over Martin.

Martin wasn't even really supposed to be here. He'd just gone to pick the others up once Kang had been defeated and then there had been a diversion around a hurricane and they'd ended up a bit lost, and then, well, and then there had been the pterodactyl.

He supposed this was the sort of thing that happened when you flew the Avengers around but that didn't mean he was anywhere close to getting used to it.

The next morning, Tony went over the remains of his suit before eventually shaking his head.

“Okay, so, I can probably put this back together enough to fly, but I can't say how long it would hold together for. Might be long enough for me to get back to civilisation and send help back for you, might only be long enough for me to come crashing down in another part of this jungle.”

“There weren't any signs of human habitation for miles around here when we came down,” said Natasha.

Steve took a deep breath, staring out at the jungle with a troubled frown.

“It'll probably be fine, my suit pretty much always holds together just long enough for me to save the day,” said Tony. “Plus, I don't even have to make it to people, I just have to get to somewhere where JARVIS can get a signal.”

“Or, we can pack up a bunch of stuff and try hiking out of here, and that way no one's risking a nasty fall from a great height,” said Clint.

“Great, genius,” said Tony. “And which direction do we hike in?”

Martin bit at his tongue, then let out a long sigh. He glanced at his Starkwatch one more time, just to confirm what he already knew right down deep in his bones. Tonight was the full moon. “It's fine,” he said, the words feeling like broken glass as he pushed them out. “No one has to go anywhere, or risk anything. I can get you out of here.”

All four of them turned and gave him a surprised look.

“Okay, no offence, man,” said Clint, “but how the hell are you planning to do that?”

Martin gave a miserable shrug. “I'm going to wait until the sun comes down.”

Tony frowned. “Wait, this is about your were thing?”

“You're a were?” asked Steve, with interest. Martin decided not to notice that neither Clint nor Natasha looked surprised by the revelation because he wasn't sure he could cope with knowing just how much of his life was an open book to the two spies he lived with.

Instead, he just took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said. “It's full moon tonight. Once the sun goes down, we can get out of here. No problem.”

“Okay,” said Tony, “now I'm really intrigued. What the hell creature could you change into that would get us out of here?”

“It's not an animal,” said Martin. Oh god, he'd been hoping to never have to let another person know about this, and now he was going to have to let four of them in on it. “It's so much stupider than that.”

“If it can get us out of here, it won't be stupid at all,” said Steve.

Martin managed a weak smile. “Just- Just don't mock me for it, okay?”

“Oh, hey, no,” said Tony, reaching out and pulling Martin into his arms. “No one's going to mock you, you're totally the best, and if you can get us home you'll be doubly the best.”

Martin just clung on and hoped like hell that he still thought that after tonight.

By the time the sun went down, Martin was starting to feel shaky with nerves. He hadn't transformed in front of other people since he was a small boy, back when his mum and dad used to just take him out to the garage and stroke his hair until it was time, and then be waiting for him the next morning with juice and a Twix.

He could feel the moon was only minutes away, so he took off his jacket and handed it to Tony so it wouldn't get damaged, then backed out into the middle of the clearing.

“Just. Just keep back, okay?” he said to Tony. “Until I'm all settled, and then. Well, and then Clint should be able to fly me, I don't think the controls are that complicated. Just, please, be careful with me.”

Clint frowned. “Wait, what? Controls?”

It was too late for questions. The moon came up and Martin felt the stretch beginning in his bones, pulling him out far larger than he had any right being, his skin transforming to metal, arms spreading wide into wings, hair and eyes and ears and brain all melting away into- Well, into nothing. An aeroplane didn't have any of those things.

The last thing he saw before he lost consciousness was the look on Tony's face, wide-eyed and a shocked. _Please don't let him be freaked out by me,_ Martin thought, and then there was nothing.

Being a were-plane would have been awesome if Martin had any idea what happened to him when he was transformed, or any control of himself. As it was, turning into an inanimate object just meant that he became nothing for the night, unable to think, feel, _act_. He lost the whole night and only came back to himself once the sun came up and he turned back into himself.

This time, when he woke up he was in the quinjet hangar back at the Tower, which at least meant they'd been able to fly him home.

He'd never let anyone fly him before. He wondered what it had been like. He only had the vaguest idea of what he was like as a plane, but he knew he wasn't a supersonic jet or anything like that. It had probably taken several hours, during which time the others would have been _inside_ him.

Ugh, probably best not to focus on that too much.

He blinked open his eyes to find Tony beside him, sat on the floor of the hangar and staring at Martin as if he'd never seen him before.

“Are you okay?”

Martin nodded and sat up, carefully stretching out muscles and joints that hadn't existed for most of the night. “Fine.”

“Right,” said Tony. “Okay. Then I can do this.” He leaned forward and just engulfed Martin in a hug, clinging on tightly.

Martin clung back just as hard. “Hey, I'm okay, seriously. Was there a problem?”

Tony shook his head against Martin's shoulder. “Nope. Clint fly us back here without any other pterodactyls or hurricanes or super-villains.”

Martin stroked over his back. “Okay, good,” he said. “Then, um, what's up?”

Tony let out a ragged laugh. “You weren't there. I mean, don't get me wrong, that was possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen, I can't believe you never told me that you actually _turn into a plane_ amongst all your other aviation ramblings, and you're an absolutely beautiful plane, seriously, your technical specifications would probably make a grown engineer weep, but- But it wasn't _you_. It was just a plane.”

Martin held on tighter. Oh god, he got it. He actually got it. 

“Yeah,” he agreed. “That's, that's why I hate it. And why I don't tell people, because they always just think I should be happy about getting be a plane when I spend so much time obsessing about them. But I don't get to be a plane and fly and all of that, I'm just- I'm nothing. Metal and plastic and wires and not a person.”

Tony nodded again, and then pulled back to kiss Martin. “I love you,” he said. “I didn't like you not being there.”

Martin kissed him back, clutching at his shoulders. “I'll always come back,” he promised, perhaps slightly recklessly. “It's just one night, and then I come back. And you never have to see it again if you don't want to, I can keep just going out and-”

“No,” said Tony immediately. “No, are you kidding? You're way too vulnerable like that. What if someone decided to take you for a joyride? No, I'm going to clear out one of the basement store rooms and put about four hundred locks on the door so you can go there and be safe.”

Martin blinked and felt a smile form on his face. “That sounds perfect,” he said, and kissed Tony again.

Oh god, how on earth had he ever been lucky enough to get Tony in his life, let alone as his fiancé? He really was perfect in every way.

“Hey,” he said, pulling away from Tony, “I've never seen myself like that, can you tell me what kind of plane I am? I mean, I know I'm not particularly hi-tech, but what's my wing shape? What are my winglets like?”

Tony blinked and then laughed. “Martin, Spitfire, light of my life. Your winglets are _beautiful_.”


End file.
